Search Results

Congregate Housing

Nancy W. Sheehan and Waldo C. Klein

in Handbook of Social Work in Health and Aging

This chapter discusses congregate housing programs, which refer to housing-service arrangements that combine an apartment-like independent living unit with services that do not fall under the medical ... More

This chapter discusses congregate housing programs, which refer to housing-service arrangements that combine an apartment-like independent living unit with services that do not fall under the medical model. Topics covered include: legal authority of congregate housing programs; prevalence and, structure of congregate living arrangements; resident population and special needs; funding, quality of care and quality of life; and social work roles.Less

Housing Programs for Low-Income Households

Edgar O. Olsen

in Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States

This chapter reviews the complex mix of housing programs for low-income families in the United States. The objectives of the study are to (a) consider the arguments that have been offered for housing ... More

This chapter reviews the complex mix of housing programs for low-income families in the United States. The objectives of the study are to (a) consider the arguments that have been offered for housing subsidies to low-income households and the implications of valid arguments for the evaluation and design of housing programs; (b) describe the most important features of the largest rental housing programs for low-income households in the United States; (c) summarize the empirical evidence on the major effects of these programs; and (d) analyze the most important options for reform of the system of housing subsidies to low-income households. The effects of these programs to be considered include: effects on the housing occupied by recipients of the subsidy and their consumption of other goods; effects on labor supply of recipients, the participation rates of different types of households, the distribution of benefits among recipients and all eligible households; effects on the types of neighborhoods in which subsidized households live, and of subsidized housing and households on their neighbors; and effects on the rents of unsubsidized units and the cost-effectiveness of alternative methods for delivering housing assistance.Less

Explanations: housing matters

Mike Allen, Lars Benjaminsen, Eoin O’Sullivan, and Nicholas Pleace

in Ending Homelessness?: The Contrasting Experiences of Denmark, Finland and Ireland

Chapter 5 explores the role of Housing First and then the broader housing market, particularly social housing, in explaining the variations in outcomes described in previous chapters. The chapter ... More

Chapter 5 explores the role of Housing First and then the broader housing market, particularly social housing, in explaining the variations in outcomes described in previous chapters. The chapter argues that the scale of secure affordable housing and the targeting of those experiencing homelessness are crucial in reducing homelessness. The Irish do worse in this regard despite expending considerable amounts of public funding on the provision of social housing. This is because it largely relies on private providers to provide housing, with the gap between ability to pay and market rents made up by a housing benefit payment. Denmark retains a considerable stock of public social housing, but is facing tight housing markets in its major urban areas, particularly Copenhagen, where homelessness in concentrated. In Finland, the steady provision of secure affordable housing, coupled with a housing-led/focused response to homelessness have allowed for the provision of a significant number of secure tenancies for households experiencing homelessness.Less

Low-Income Housing Policy

Robert Collinson, Ingrid Gould Ellen, and Jens Ludwig

in Economics of Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, Volume II

The United States government devotes about $40 billion each year to means-tested housing programs, plus another $6 billion or so in tax expenditures on the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). What ... More

The United States government devotes about $40 billion each year to means-tested housing programs, plus another $6 billion or so in tax expenditures on the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). What exactly do we spend this money on, why, and what does it accomplish? We focus on these questions. We begin by reviewing the history of low-income housing programs in the U.S., and then summarize the characteristics of participants in means-tested housing programs and how programs have changed over time. We consider important conceptual issues surrounding the design of and rationale for means-tested housing programs in the U.S. and review existing empirical evidence, which is limited in important ways. Finally, we conclude with thoughts about the most pressing questions that might be addressed in future research in this area.Less

Housing, Health, and Quality of Life

Judith G. Gonyea

in Handbook of Social Work in Health and Aging

This chapter describes housing services available for older adults, noting that shelter is a basic need and describing the programs designed to meet that need. It identifies the role of income ... More

This chapter describes housing services available for older adults, noting that shelter is a basic need and describing the programs designed to meet that need. It identifies the role of income disparities in determining the housing options available to seniors and uses the concept of “environmental press” to argue that “goodness of fit” is an appropriate yardstick for determining the quality of a housing setting for adults with disabilities. The chapter places the profession of social work squarely in the middle of housing decisions, arguing that our assessment skills and commitment to serving vulnerable populations leave us well positioned to improve the way the nation's seniors are housed.Less

Housing allowances in Germany

Stefan Kofner

in Housing allowances in comparative perspective

Housing allowances (Wohngeld in German) come into play whenever income is insufficient to enable the household to obtain accommodation that meets a minimum housing standard. As a tied income ... More

Housing allowances (Wohngeld in German) come into play whenever income is insufficient to enable the household to obtain accommodation that meets a minimum housing standard. As a tied income transfer, it is an incentive towards a higher individual housing consumption. Housing allowances are widely seen in Germany as a relatively market-conforming instrument of social policy with the ability to act as a substitute for an important part of the social housing programme. This chapter presents a brief history of Wohngeld. It then discusses the calculation of entitlement to Wohngeld, allowances for homeowners, housing assistance for social security benefit recipients, and the impact of housing allowances. This is followed by a review of policy debates and reform.Less

Introduction

Matthew D. Marr

in Better Must Come: Exiting Homelessness in Two Global Cities

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book analyzes the experiences of people who used transitional housing programs in Los Angeles and Tokyo. It focuses on ... More

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book analyzes the experiences of people who used transitional housing programs in Los Angeles and Tokyo. It focuses on the process of exiting homelessness, not only examine an understudied aspect of homelessness but also advance a shift in the understanding of homelessness, emphasizing the potential for its transcendence. It shows how persons experiencing homelessness orient cognitively and behaviorally toward transcending the condition of homelessness itself. It further argues that processes of exiting homelessness are not determined by any singular context, such as the constraining forces of neoliberal globalization, punitive state policies toward the poor, or individual-level resilience or lack thereof. Rather, the processes of exiting homelessness are shaped by the interaction of multiple embedded contexts that operate at different social levels.Less

Ties with Organizational Staff

Matthew D. Marr

in Better Must Come: Exiting Homelessness in Two Global Cities

This chapter shows that relationships with transitional housing program staff can have an important impact on trajectories of homelessness, either obstructing access to key resources necessary to ... More

This chapter shows that relationships with transitional housing program staff can have an important impact on trajectories of homelessness, either obstructing access to key resources necessary to exit homelessness or helping people obtain these resources and get out of the predicament. Organizational culture is a key influential factor explaining why some organizations can promote trust and mobilize a variety of resources for clients whereas others can stifle trust, contact with staff, and mobilization of resources. In Los Angeles and Tokyo, urban welfare regimes operated transitional housing programs through two different approaches: Los Angeles followed a more neoliberalized model through maximizing use of the strengths of private, nonprofit organizations, whereas Tokyo used a developmental model tightly controlling semigovernmental organizations. The differences in trust and mobilization of resources between interviewees in Los Angeles and Tokyo are primarily the result of different organizational, urban, and national conditions.Less

Enabling More Families with Housing Vouchers to Access Higher-Opportunity Neighborhoods

Barbara Sard

in Facing Segregation: Housing Policy Solutions for a Stronger Society

This chapter discusses the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program, which helps more than two million low-income households—nearly half with minor children in the home—to pay for modestly priced, ... More

This chapter discusses the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program, which helps more than two million low-income households—nearly half with minor children in the home—to pay for modestly priced, decent-quality homes in the private market. The program has reduced housing cost burdens, decreased homelessness, and increased housing stability, but vouchers currently do less than they could to help families live in low-poverty, high-opportunity neighborhoods. Public housing agencies have flexibility to implement strategies to improve location outcomes in their HCV programs. But unless changes in federal policy encourage them to take such steps and to modify counterproductive policies—and reliable funding is available to maintain the number of families receiving HCV assistance and to administer the program effectively—there is little reason to expect better results. Federal, state, and local agencies can make four sets of interrelated policy changes that will help families in the HCV program to live in better locations.Less

The Great Society, High and Low

in Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer

By early 1967 it was clear to most observers, and to the president himself, that the Great Society was running out of steam, and facing so many obstacles, Johnson began to wonder “why he had ever ... More

By early 1967 it was clear to most observers, and to the president himself, that the Great Society was running out of steam, and facing so many obstacles, Johnson began to wonder “why he had ever wanted to be President.” Urban violence swept the nation, making earlier conflicts seem minor. Riots in Detroit and Newark in particular dwarfed any seen before. The administration would face a flurry of proposals and criticism for its neglect of cities, and Weaver would endure withering criticism both within the administration and from outside as he struggled to manage the Department of Housing and Urban Development bureaucracy and come up with ways to respond to urban decline. Out of this conflict emerged significant new legislative programs. In 1968 Weaver achieved his two major goals — the passage of a federal fair-housing law and a dramatic expansion of federal housing programs. Both laws marked significant progress and would spur the construction of thousands of units of housing while at the same time opening opportunities to African Americans and other minorities. But these victories would be clouded by the continued trouble within American cities and the escalating conflict in, and over, Vietnam, both of which would lead to Johnson's decision to withdraw his name from the presidential ballot.Less

Creating a New Order: Black Politics in the New Deal Era

in Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer

The federal government gave African Americans some reason for cheer despite the discrimination that continued to affect their lives. In the National Urban League journal Opportunity, Weaver made the ... More

The federal government gave African Americans some reason for cheer despite the discrimination that continued to affect their lives. In the National Urban League journal Opportunity, Weaver made the case for the Roosevelt administration in the article “The New Deal and the Negro: A Look at the Facts.” He reminded readers of the economic hardships facing African Americans when FDR took office, and he described the numerous benefits that the New Deal had already provided. Weaver also remained a leader in the continually controversial but expanding field of public housing. First in the Interior Department and then in the newly created U.S. Housing Authority, Weaver struggled to protect the interests of blacks in the initiative. As the federal government's support for publicly owned shelter was institutionalized, Weaver worked to see that the program provided employment for black construction and professional workers and to ensure that black families received a substantial share of the housing produced, while at the same time promoting racial integration. Weaver's efforts were successful in the area of employment and also in the creation of a small number of experimental ventures in integration. However, opposition to these efforts, as well as to public housing in general, remained strong, so powerful, in fact, that Weaver's promotion of integration would imperil the program and ultimately cost him his job.Less

Of Demolitions and Donors the Problematics of State Intervention in Informal Cairo1

Diane Singerman

in Cairo Contested: Governance, Urban Space, and Global Modernity

This chapter shows that “the logic of neglectful rule”, is not simply due to a scarcity of resources to service, regulate, and improve the city but can be understood better as a mix of disengagement, ... More

This chapter shows that “the logic of neglectful rule”, is not simply due to a scarcity of resources to service, regulate, and improve the city but can be understood better as a mix of disengagement, clientelism, and fear that views land and housing itself as an important spoil to distribute to its loyal followers. It argues that citizens should not expect the government to embrace land titling and regularization efforts that would provide security of tenure, a legal status, and housing equity to millions of Cairenes. Three brief examples are presented that indicate the durability and tenacity of what is often called informal Cairo. The failure of the World Bank and USAID development projects in the 1970s and 1980s suggests that any comprehensive approach to urban informality requires giving such neighborhoods a measure of legal recognition and allowing them to develop a measure of social autonomy. Due to this, they never again attempted such urban upgrading and housing programs in Cairo.Less

The Rise of Federal Credit Programs

Sarah L. Quinn

in American Bonds: How Credit Markets Shaped a Nation

This chapter assesses the expansion of credit programs in the New Deal, showing that it was the key moment when credit support came fully into its role as a multipurpose tool of statecraft. The New ... More

This chapter assesses the expansion of credit programs in the New Deal, showing that it was the key moment when credit support came fully into its role as a multipurpose tool of statecraft. The New Deal credit programs mattered because they helped a fractured political system continue to function. Their appeal rested in how credit programs circumvented the nation's deepest, most intractable fissures. Credit programs allowed government officials to promote specific markets without meeting the various demands of central planning. They could be justified on many grounds and framed as consistent with free-market ideals. Equally important, they could be removed from the budget. The latter characteristic did not please the most stalwart of fiscal conservatives, but it did create more options for maneuvering around them. The chapter then considers how the Reconstruction Finance Corporation—the financial giant that funded much of the New Deal—and the housing programs served as the institutional centers for the development of U.S. credit policy.Less

The Homogenised Urban Environment and Locality

C. J. W.-L. Wee

in The Asian Modern: Culture, Capitalist Development, Singapore

This chapter examines how the state's extensive modernist housing programmes and decontextualized urbanism became a major component of Singapore's socio-cultural engineering. In the chapter, the ... More

This chapter examines how the state's extensive modernist housing programmes and decontextualized urbanism became a major component of Singapore's socio-cultural engineering. In the chapter, the reactions of these housing programmes incurred reactions which were documented in the arts and in the independent films of the 1990s. For instance, Eric Khoo's Twelve Storeys depicts the social dysfunctionality of the city-state's less-globalized citizens living in public housing blocks. These films examined the problematic and bizarre aspects of non-élite life as well as introduced the use of Mandarin-Chinese and the suppressed Hokkien-Chinese. They served as attempts to re-assert and reinvent the concept of “locality” despite the efforts of the government to deterritorialize and project a happy-clappy modern Singapore.Less

The Khrushchev era: ‘To every family its own apartment’

Lynne Attwood

in Gender and Housing in Soviet Russia: Private Life in a Public Space

This chapter is concerned with the Khrushchev era and the enormous housing programme which attempted to deliver ‘to every family its own apartment’. Khrushchev admitted that the apartments would not ... More

This chapter is concerned with the Khrushchev era and the enormous housing programme which attempted to deliver ‘to every family its own apartment’. Khrushchev admitted that the apartments would not be luxurious. Despite Khrushchev's insistence that newly-weds would be entitled to their own apartments, in reality there was little chance of a young married couple with no children receiving an apartment. Women suffered considerable discrimination in housing distribution. It was not only residents of self-build or cooperative housing who were able to feel themselves ‘masters of their world’. The attempt to achieve a high degree of standardisation in the self-contained apartment might have been a way of counteracting its potential for creating a degree of privacy. The Khrushchev housing programme did constitute a major turning point. The Soviet Union was ideologically opposed to the private home ownership which was a prominent part of the American Dream.Less

A Liberal Experiment: Race and Housing in the New Deal

in Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer

Robert C. Weaver spent the majority of his time working on the Roosevelt administration's public housing experiment. Federal housing programs were a crucial part of New Deal urban policy, and these ... More

Robert C. Weaver spent the majority of his time working on the Roosevelt administration's public housing experiment. Federal housing programs were a crucial part of New Deal urban policy, and these initiatives significantly changed the relationship between the federal government and the cities. Weaver's involvement in the construction effort would begin a career of engagement with housing and urban development and prepare him for the leadership roles he would take in the 1950s and 1960s. Because he was present at the formative moment of these important policies, he gained unsurpassed knowledge about urban policy and made contacts in the field that sustained him throughout his career. In addition, although his part would later be forgotten, Weaver played a crucial role in the development of antidiscrimination policies that over time became models for other government programs.Less

Introduction

Lynne Attwood

in Gender and Housing in Soviet Russia: Private Life in a Public Space

This book discusses how the original plans for a socialist form of housing were distorted, sometimes almost beyond recognition, by ideological confusion, financial constraints, corruption, ineptness, ... More

This book discusses how the original plans for a socialist form of housing were distorted, sometimes almost beyond recognition, by ideological confusion, financial constraints, corruption, ineptness, the banality of daily life and by tacit obstruction on the part of citizens. It also considers how the peculiarities of Soviet housing could be said to have led to a distinctly Soviet understanding of the home and of ‘private life’. It then explores the interaction between the Soviet housing programme and gender relations. The relationship between public and private space is significant for this book. In addition, the link between housing and daily life throughout the entire span of Soviet history is considered. It elaborates the ways in which official ideas on housing and daily life were propagandised through the print media. Finally, an overview of the chapters included in this book is given.Less